I'll deal, quickly, with the one film I watched last night, Alien Trespass. I'd seen posts about this for a while on Quiet Earth and IO9 etc etc and for some reasons I'd thought it sounded quite funny however it's just a waste of 90mins. It's not big, nor clever and certainly not funny - avoid.
I'm a bit of a Stewart/Colbert nutjob but lately I've been getting ticked off with both their interview segments. Colbert for his general interrupting rudeness, yes I know it's part of his shtick but sometimes he may as well shout/rant a picture of his guest as they barely get to say five words when sitting opposite and recently Stewart for not airing the full interviews. They at least post them online but couldn't they just squeeze out some of your other stuff instead, like the gags about stuff he's been joking with the audience pre-show. Anyways here's the full Bill Kristol interview.
Thanks to Wonkette for posting this amazing clip of Shatner reading out Palin's recent bye-bye speech. UPDATE - oops vid gone already. Sure you'll find it somewhere though
Crank 2: High Voltage starring Jason Statham is a fine sequel with the same insanely frenetic action and tongue in cheek humour as the original. Fans of highbrow movies should definitely avoid this one as it's crude and very violent throughout - otherwise strap yourself in for a thrill-ride like no other. Now that Statham has moved away from Ritchie's tired London-shtick he's turning into a very capable action star and has handled his recent projects really well.
I Love You, Man was a little disappointing, I like Rudd and the other guy from Freaks & Geeks Seagal I think and it was funny for most of the film but it traded on the fashionable cringe-comedy too much, was at least 20 mins too long and had a very predictable rom-com plot. Thing From Another World - bit of a classic this one. I hadn't seen it in ages so thought I'd give it a go and it still stands up on it's own terms. Everyone smokes constantly and there's some nice lines between the Captain and his paramour mixed between attacks from the Thing. Worth catching if you've only seen the Carpenter remake.
God Told Me To, a weird little Larry Cohen film turned out to be quite good and ripe for a remake I think. The film follows a Catholic police detective investigating a number of unusual killings, all explained by the perps as occurring because "God Told Me To" - naughty, naughty God. Anyways this grimy little film then twists into something altogether different when the cop realises he might be connected to the crimes himself. I won't explain more but keeps your eyes open for the mangina at the end.
Another Larry Cohen film I watched over the weekend was Maniac Cop - despite starring Bruce Campbell this was a tediously formulaic, poorly shot killer-thriller. Not sure how it spawned two sequels.
Inglorious Bastards, the original Italian exploitation film was really quite good. Basically a mash-up of The Dirty Dozen and a few other WW2 classics this is a foot to the floor, all-action Nazi slaughter fest. The plot is a bit thin as you might expect essentially some military prisoners escape during a German air-raid and start killing their way towards the Swiss border. I'm sceptical that Tarantino's reboot will match the frenetic pace of this gem. The Inhabited Island Part Two - was an improvement on Part One but it's still flawed by the strangely cheap looking SFX and dodgy acting. This part at least started to explore the philosophical aspects of Maxim's arrival and his quest for social revolution if only briefly. I've looked into buying the original novel but it's pricey so it might have to wait till next month. Overall I did enjoy both films, they're certainly a departure from the usual Hollywood big budget scifi but I'd say they're films only for the dedicated scifi nerds.
The Chandra X-Ray Telescope is 10yrs old today - here's a link to a nice slideshow of some its images, via the BBC.
Here's another link from the Beeb about the launch of a really cool wireless electricity system. Using resonance to transmit the electrical energy this could be huge. I might be mistaken but didn't Tesla design something similar ?
And a little interesting article by a statistician about the disputed Iranian election.
An awesome pic, courtesy of New Scientist of the Cygnus Bubble.
There's been some great stuff happening this week - Chandra's birthday, a strike on Jupiter that left a hole the size of the Earth.
And Ice Volcanoes on Enceleadus ! thanks to Io9, Discovery Science etc for the links/images. Can't wait till the next Sky At Night episode as Moore will be dangerously excited by all this news.
